A skateboarder rolls past a mural at a CCSF campus at Hayes Street and Masonic Avenue in the Nopa neighborhood in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, May 21, 2009.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

A skateboarder rolls past a mural at a CCSF campus at Hayes Street...

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Donald Drummond has his shoes shined by Bryan Curlee at California and Davis streets in the Financial District of San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. A new Board of Realtors map to be released soon will rename the area as the Barbary Coast neighborhood.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Donald Drummond has his shoes shined by Bryan Curlee at California...

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Brian DeSimone makes one of his famed lattes at the Piccino cafe in the Dogpatch neighborhood in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. Men's Journal magazine recently called Dogpatch one of the best neighborhoods in the country.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Brian DeSimone makes one of his famed lattes at the Piccino cafe in...

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Office workers cross the busy the Financial District intersection of California and Montgomery streets in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, May 21, 2009. A new Board of Realtors map to be released soon will rename the area as the Barbary Coast neighborhood.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Office workers cross the busy the Financial District intersection...

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Cirrus Blaafjell (right) adjusts heat lamps for Stacy Johnson who was having highlights added to her hair at Blaafjell's hair salon in the Nopa neighborhood in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, May 20, 2009.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Cirrus Blaafjell (right) adjusts heat lamps for Stacy Johnson who...

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A man walks past the Dogpatch Saloon at 22nd and Third streets in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. Men's Journal magazine recently called Dogpatch one of the best neighborhoods in the country.

It's not the Western Addition - it's NoPa. It's not the Financial District - it's the Barbary Coast. The gritty Hells Angels enclave known as Dogpatch? Now one of America's hottest ZIP codes, according to the current edition of Men's Journal magazine.

San Franciscans love to microbrand their neighborhoods, and at last count Wikipedia listed 109 places to live in the city by the bay.

The continual turnover in names, boundaries and reputations is enough to make an old timer's head spin.

"A confusing and inconsistent mess," according to a 1977 attempt to list 144 distinct neighborhoods in California Living, the magazine of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle.

Stepping into the fray, the San Francisco Association of Realtors is coming out with a new neighborhood map this summer - replacing stale names with hip ones, adding enclaves and changing boundaries to try to answer one of San Francisco's most complicated questions:

So, where do you live?

The real estate map, last updated in 2005, is serious business - homes for sale through the Multiple Listing Service are automatically assigned to districts on the map, a factor buyers and real estate appraisers use to help size up a home.

"We worked for four years on this, and we didn't allow changes like 'TenderNob' for the Tenderloin just to change home values - the changes had to reflect a true change and feel of the fabric of a neighborhood," said Matthew Borland, a Zephyr real estate agent who is leading the map redesign.

On the map

Some of the new monikers have bubbled up from popular culture, others have the whiff of real estate marketing euphemism, and some are a return to names that stuck despite trendsetters' efforts to change them.

Cole Valley will finally make the map, taking a bite out of Parnassus Heights territory. Dolores Heights and South Beach get bigger.

The area around Bayview Park and Candlestick Park becomes Candlestick Point.

"San Franciscans have a culture of individuality. It attracts people who don't want to fit into a mold, so constantly reinventing their neighborhoods is part of that," said Joy Liu, a San Francisco real estate agent for Coldwell Banker.

The Financial District has been renamed Barbary Coast to harken the Gold Rush-era hangout for prostitutes, whiskey and poker.

"We thought it was a fun name that brings the area back to its roots. 'Financial District' says office buildings and doesn't convey much of a residential identity," Borland said.

For Donald Drummond, who opened the Drummond & Associates law firm in the Financial District in 1971, "Barbary Coast" doesn't roll off the tongue.

Pros, cons of Barbary Coast

"I've always thought of Barbary Coast as more west of us," said Drummond, who was getting his shoes shined at the corner of California and Davis streets.

Plus, the name connotes pirates, heathens and all-around mayhem - not the image to project to Wall Street, said Bryan Curlee, who was shining Drummond's shoes.

But down the street at Tadich Grill, the city's oldest restaurant, bartender Paul Lovallo lit up at the idea.

"Tadich Grill goes back to that time - to 1849 - so it could harken that era and bring some cachet and some tourists into the restaurant," he said.

Bartender Adam Richey scoffed, whipped out a history book from under the bar, and pointed to a map.

"Look, this area was underwater back then, so to call us Barbary Coast is technically wrong. There was no coast here," he said.

When hair stylist Cirrus Blaafjell moved into her home seven years ago, people told her she lived in Western Addition.

Now, everyone calls it NoPa. A restaurant of the same name that opened in an abandoned Laundromat in 2006 at the corner of Hayes and Divisadero streets cemented the name of the 10-block area north of the Panhandle.

"I still can't bring myself to say NoPa," Blaafjell said as she put highlights in a customer's hair at Salon Alta on Hayes Street.

"It's a little too snooty, so I compromise and call it North Panhandle," she said.

Dogpatch left in the dirt

So does the Realtor map.

Dogpatch - the 10-block industrial neighborhood fanning out from the intersection of Third and 22nd treets - didn't make the new MLS map, where it will still be referred to as the Central Waterfront.

But the painters, flower arrangers and designers who live there don't worry much about outsider opinion. To them, their beloved neighborhood will always be Dogpatch - named for the stray dogs that used to roam for scraps among the meatpacking factories that have since been converted into live-work artist lofts.

"Dogpatch is really user-friendly for business," Andrei Hedstrom said as he sipped a Blue Bottle cappuccino on 22nd Street on a break from his digital media company, SweetRush.

"My employees can park here, and the rent on our warehouse is really affordable," he said.

Men's Journal magazine chose Dogpatch as one of the country's best places to live for its unique restaurants, an impressive gym at the new UCSF Mission Bay campus, and its proximity to freeways and the ballpark.

"It's getting noticed," said Brian DeSimone, who moved to Dogpatch two years ago.

"Last week, for the first time, I saw three women walking side by side on the sidewalk, pushing babies in strollers, and thought, 'Uh-oh, Noe Valley!' "

Interactive map: A different look at San Francisco neighborhoods. sfgate.com/ZHFT.